arXiv subjects

Yuta Sugiura

Publications and source records attributed to Yuta Sugiura.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

MarineCraft: Enabling Rapid Prototyping of Underwater Robots via Modular Construction

Underwater robot development is often hindered by the complexities of waterproofing and wiring, which significantly delay the rapid prototyping process. This paper presents MarineCraft, a modular toolkit designed to accelerate the development cycle through structural reconfiguration. The system features self-contained, waterproof propulsion modules that integrate power, wireless communication, and actuation. By eliminating centralized wiring and the need for repeated sealing, MarineCraft allows diverse robot geometries to be assembled and tested in minutes rather than days. Experimental results demonstrate that this reconfigurable architecture enables fast, iterative design cycles while maintaining reliable operation and leak-free performance at depths of up to 2.5 meters. Our toolkit effectively lowers the barrier to underwater robotics by transforming modularity into a vehicle for rapid physical prototyping.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

InvisIto: Weaving Unobtrusive Infrared Markers for Ubiquitous Textile Interaction

Textiles are increasingly explored as media for interacting with digital information. However, many of the existing approaches rely on visible tags, printed overlays, or electronic modules that compromise the fabric's aesthetic and tactile qualities. To address this, we present InvisIto, a method for weaving visually unobtrusive yet machine-readable infrared markers directly into fabrics using near-infrared (NIR)-absorbing yarns. Although these yarns look similar to standard fibers in ambient light, they produce strong contrast in NIR imaging. Our method includes: (1) a design tool that helps users easily embed infrared markers into weaving drafts, (2) five disguising strategies that further reduce marker visibility under ambient light, and (3) a camera-based detection pipeline for decoding and tracking the woven markers. InvisIto supports both woven QR codes for data encoding and woven ArUco markers for binary input and deformation tracking. We demonstrate applications across hand weaving, Jacquard weaving, and industrial fabrication, showing that InvisIto supports scalable interaction and fabrication from bespoke artifacts to mass production.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

koboshi: A Base That Animates Everyday Objects

We propose a base-shaped robot named "koboshi" that moves everyday objects. This koboshi has a spherical surface in contact with the floor, and by moving a weight inside using built-in motors, it can rock up and down, and side to side. By placing everyday items on this koboshi, users can impart new movement to otherwise static objects. The koboshi is equipped with sensors to measure its posture, enabling interaction with users. Additionally, it has communication capabilities, allowing multiple units to communicate with each other.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Practice Support for Violin Bowing by Measuring Bow Pressure and Position

The violin is one of the most popular musical instruments. Various parameters of bowing motion, such as pressure, position, and speed, are crucial for producing a beautiful tone. However, mastering them is challenging and requires extensive practice. In this study, we aimed to support practice of bowing, focusing on bow pressure. First, we compared the bowing movements, specifically bow pressure, bow position, and bow speed, of eight experienced players with those of eight beginners. Next, we developed and evaluated a visual feedback system that displays bow pressure to support practice. We taught the identified differences to 14 beginners, dividing them into two groups: one practiced with an explanation, and the other with both an explanation and a feedback system. These two experiments found that clarifying the characteristics unique to experienced players can support practice.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

EnchantedClothes: Visual and Tactile Feedback with an Abdomen-Attached Robot through Clothes

Wearable robots are designed to be worn on the human body. Taking advantage of their physical form, various applications for wearable robots are being considered. This study proposes a wearable robot worn on the abdomen and a new interaction with it. Our robot enables a variety of applications related to communication between the wearer and surrounding humans through visual and tactile feedback. The contributions of this research will be (1) the proposal of a novel wearable robot worn on the abdomen and (2) a new interaction with it.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2024

A Comparison of Violin Bowing Pressure and Position among Expert Players and Beginners

The violin is one of the most popular musical instruments, but mastering it requires a significant amount of practice time. The bowing action (pressure, position, speed) of the right hand is crucial in determining tonal quality, but this is difficult to master. This study compared the bowing movements, specifically bow pressure, bow position, and bow speed, of experienced players with those of beginners. Identifying common bowing characteristics of experienced violin players can aid the evaluation of beginners' skills and the development of a feedback system that supports self-practice and instruction.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Exploring Gestural Interaction with a Cushion Interface for Smart Home Control

In this research, we aim to realize cushion interface for operating smart home. We designed user-defined gestures using cushion and developed gesture recognition system. We asked some users to make gestures using cushions for operating home appliances and determined user-defined gesture sets. We developed two methods for gesture identification. The First, We inserted sensor modules consisting of photo reflective sensors and acceleration sensor inside a cushion. The second, we embedded the acceleration sensor arrays in the cushion cover. Gesture recognizer was implemented using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). To evaluate our method, We conducted an experiment to measure recognition accuracy. Results showed that an average accuracy was 94.8% when training for each user, and an average accuracy of 91.3% when testing with a user that did not exist in the training data set.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Guidance of the Center of Pressure Using Haptic Presentation

Accurately instructing posture and the position of the body's center of gravity is challenging. In this study, we propose a system that utilizes haptic feedback to induce the Center of Pressure (CoP) movement. The Wii Balance Board is employed to sense the CoP, and vibration motors are used for haptic feedback. To provide a comparison, inductions were also performed using visual and auditory feedback, and the time required for induction was measured. Additionally, after the experiments, a questionnaire survey was conducted.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

A Stretchable Electrostatic Tactile Surface

Tactile sensation is essential for humans to recognize objects. Various devices have been developed in the past for tactile presentation by electrostatic force, which are easy to configure devices, but there is currently no such device that features stretchability. Considering that the device is worn over the joints of a human body or robot, it is extremely important that the device itself be stretchable. In this study, we propose a stretchable electrostatic tactile surface comprising a stretchable transparent electrode and a stretchable insulating film that can be stretched to a maximum of 50%. This means that when attached to the human body, this surface can respond to the expansion and contraction that occur due to joint movements. This surface can also provide tactile information in response to deformation such as pushing and pulling. As a basic investigation, we measured the lower limit of voltage that can be perceived by changing the configuration of the surface and evaluated the states of stretching and contraction. We also investigated and modeled the relationship between the voltage and the perceived intensity.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Vsens Reality: Blending the Virtual Sensors into XR

In recent years, virtual sensing techniques have been extensively studied as a method of data collection in simulated virtual spaces for the development of human activity recognition (HAR) systems. To date, this technique has enabled the transformation between different modalities, significantly expanding datasets that are typically difficult to collect. However, there is limited research on how to make virtual sensors more easy-to-use or effective as tools for making sense of the sensor data. The context-awareness and intuitiveness of XR make it an ideal platform for virtual sensors. In this work, we demonstrate, Vsens Reality, the use of virtual sensors under the XR context as an augmentation tool for the design of interactive systems.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Metasurface-Enabled Multifunctional Single-Frequency Sensors without External Power

IoT sensors are crucial for visualizing multidimensional and multimodal information and enabling future IT applications/services such as cyber-physical space, digital twins, autonomous driving, smart cities, and virtual/augmented reality (VR or AR). However, IoT sensors need to be battery-free to realistically manage and maintain the growing number of available sensing devices. Here, we provide a novel sensor design approach that employs metasurfaces to enable multifunctional sensing without requiring an external power source. Importantly, unlike existing metasurface-based sensors, our metasurfaces can sense multiple physical parameters even at a fixed frequency by breaking classic harmonic oscillations in the time domain, making the proposed sensors viable for usage with limited frequency resources. Moreover, we provide a method for predicting physical parameters using the machine learning-based approach of random forest regression. The sensing performance was confirmed by estimating temperature and light intensity, and excellent determination coefficients larger than 0.96 were achieved. Our study affords new opportunities for sensing multiple physical properties without relying on an external power source or needing multiple frequencies, which markedly simplifies and facilitates the design of next-generation wireless communication systems.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2022

Metasurface-Inspired Maintenance-Free IoT Tags Characterised in Both Frequency and Time Domains

We present metasurface-inspired maintenance-free IoT tags that can be characterised not only by frequency-domain profiles but also by time-domain profiles. In particular, time-domain characterisation is made possible by implementing the waveform-selective mechanisms of recently developed circuit-based metasurfaces that behave differently, even at the same frequency, in accordance with the pulse duration of the incident wave. Our designs are numerically and experimentally validated and potentially contribute to accommodating an increasing number of IoT tags within a single wireless network while reducing maintenance effort.

physics.app-ph↗